5.15pm update

White House denies incompetence claims

The White House today rejected damning claims made by George Bush's former chief counter-terrorism advisor that his administration did a "terrible job" in fighting terrorism and failed to listen to warnings of an attack and prior to September 11.

Richard Clarke, who retired last year, made a raft of allegations about the Bush administration to current affairs program Sixty Minutes, on the eve of the publication of his book "Against All Enemies: Inside America's war on terror," which has just been published.

US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice hit the airwaves to defend many of the claims in the book, telling CNN she was "flabbergasted" by Mr Clarke. "This retrospective re-writing of the history of the first several months of this administration is not helpful," she said.

"And what's particularly not helpful is to somehow suggest that the attack on 9/11 could have been prevented by a series of meetings."

"During that period of time we were at battle stations. The president, in June and July [2001] when the threat spikes were so high, was hearing from [CIA chief] George Tenet every day."

Ms Rice also criticised Mr Clarke's claims that she appeared to have never heard of al-Qaida when he briefed her in 2001. "I just think it's ridiculous. The fact is that I wasn't born yesterday when Dick Clarke briefed me," she said.

"I knew that in 1998 we suspected that al-Qaida had done the bombings of the [US] embassies [in Kenya and Tanzania], I knew about [Osama] bin Laden," she said. "This wasn't an issue of who knew about al-Qaida, it was an issue about what we were going to do about al-Qaida."

The national security advisor also criticised Mr Clarke in a Washington Post column. "Before September 11, we closely monitored threats to our nation," she wrote. "Once in office, we quickly began crafting a comprehensive new strategy to 'eliminate' the al-Qaida network. "The president wanted more than occasional, retaliatory cruise missile strikes. He told me he was tired of swatting flies'."

Mr Clarke, who helped shape US policy on terrorism under President Reagan and the first President Bush, says the current Bush administration was fixated on Iraq after September 11 and intimidated officials into finding a link between Iraq and al-Qaida.

He claims Mr Bush "dragged me into a room" and said he wanted him to find out whether Iraq had conducted the September 11 attack.

Ms Rice told ABC television she didn't remember the meeting. "He said that the president pulled him aside. I don't know, maybe the president pulled him aside," said Ms Rice.

In an unusual move, the White House also issued a point by point rebuttal of many of Mr Clarke's claims. A statement said the national security deputies worked diligently between March and September 2001 to develop a strategy to attack the terror network, one that was completed and ready for Mr Bush's approval a week before the suicide airliner hijackings.

Mr Clarke is expected to testify before a federal panel investigating the September 11 attacks.